I mean those people who you look at them and they have the body and responsibilities of a 43 year old but then you hear them talk about other people or other ethnicities or other situations that people are experiencing elsewhere and the person had might as well be a remorseless 3 year old that was raised wrongly… The thing that floors me is hen you meet a very old person, Im talking in their 60s or older, and they start spewing some of the most idiotic, narcisisstic garbage a person could ever talk of… ‘How have you spent all these years learning nothing?!’
Is it really THAT hard to break free of the chains of your terrible childhood and develop just a little empathy , understanding and humanity towards others? I DEFINITELY didnt have the best childhood seeing as how I was bullied and ostracized for decades , even by my parents lol, but I came to realize that ‘Hurt people will hurt people.’ so why am I going to go out of my way to be selfish and make more people who are hurt? But on the other hand I see , and Im sure most of you also have seen, that humans are not a very logicsl species sometimes. We have the potential to be more logical than Einstein but it doesnt always play out like that… We as a species do A LOOOT of things based on anti-logic, emotions, our pains, our traumas, or our cognitive distortions and this in turn sometimes creates more ‘hurt people’ …
Im not saying that humans have gotten worse over time cause anybody here can open up wikipedia and read about all the awful things we used to do to each other , if anything we have gotten better just a little bit. But why are there STILL in the year of 2026 people who choose to just not ‘grow up’ ?
TL;DR too many adults , and even seniors , Ive emcountered have illogical and sometimes psychopathic opinions . Why do so many people choose to not grow up and be more understanding?
What is your take on something like this?
Edit: from what Im seeing there are couple takes I ld agree with 5o explain this phenomena
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there could be neurological disorders like CTE , schizoaffective disorders, etc… that causes an older individual to do and say unusual things …and hurtful things. Cures for these are barely existent so if someone suffers from them? Theyre just out of luck and hvlave to hope they dont do anything too hurtful
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The overal lack of mmental health care , mental health breaks, mental health interventions , and psychiatric medication access globally. Some people are lucky and are born in a region that has such things easily. …others sadly arent…
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Some people get stuck in a cycle of self destructive cognitive distortions that impairs their ability to grow. there is the possibility that it is a reactive defensive mechanism that one has in response to our very flawed societies that humans have evolved from thousands of years that although it was probably w useful reaction thousands of years ago the current world is very much differenr than it was thousands or years ago . So these cognitive distortions become detrimental more than they are beneficial. Very few people are born innately malicious and/or with an antisocial personality disorder , but a person can clearly become both of these things with enough prompting. And not all humans are the same we all have different genetics ans different stories , all because one oerson reacts in a healthy and self-loving manner to malicious stimulation that doesnt mean all other peoole will do the same. This also has the chance to lead to echo chambering or self imoosed isolation and both if these makes recovery and interventions from external sources more difficult. So basicallt both nurture and nature can play a role in the self-destructive practices abd thought process a person conducts in response to the sad and lonely society of today.
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Humans havent really evolved to or adapted well to modern society. Like empathy of other groups or for other groups of people on the other side of the planet may be difficult for some people to understand and learn. Humans have created and stuck tio ‘outgroups’ and ‘ingroups’ for millenia and very rarely have humans acknowledge the truth that ‘We are ALL part of. the ingroup since we are ALL humans’ . I dont think this completely excuses a person to treat other groups of people in awful ways though.
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Soceties that have encouraged ignorance all in the name of listening only to a few politicians and very rich people will clearly create more and more ignorant peoples. And this clearly occurs tor the detriment of those people who cjoose to be ignorant. Being very rich or a politician doesnt mean that you kniw everything that each human needs
I highly doubt you’re a paragon of empathy or understanding, and your post here is very clear evidence.
You want to dunk on them to boost your ego. You’re just like them, just younger and more arrogant and blind to your own prejudices, biases, and abuses of others.
well youre not wrong . I am DEFINITELY not a paragon of empathy . And yes I do have my biases, but almost all humans have some biases right?
But as for my ‘abuse of others’ ?.. Wot? I swear Id never. I never want to hurt innocent people and further ‘enshittify’ the world that is already shitty.
I must say that your post itself does not come across as particularly empathetic. Calling people “negative IQ narcissistic garbage” is rather harsh and dehumanizing way to describe them, even when their behaviour is genuinely harmful or immature.
People do not simply choose to become the way they are. If you had inherited their genetic predispositions, been raised by the same parents, and grown up in the same environment, you would very likely think and act much as they do. Treating individuals as the ultimate, free authors of their character and behaviour is an error in my view. This is not an excuse for harmful actions, but it does call for more compassion and a clearer recognition that most of what separates us from them is luck rather than personal moral achievement.
The fact that some of us managed to develop greater empathy or self-awareness is largely a matter of circumstance. It is not a virtue we can fully claim credit for, any more than others can be fully blamed for failing to escape the patterns they inherited.
I have never seen anyone use the term “IQ” in any fashion who wasn’t some incel tier troll. OP seems to fram thmselfe as not, and it may be just an innocent use, but it feels like a vague tell.
Also, in my experiencr, essentially anyome who would actually be “high IQ”, does not give a shit about some baseless number to represent intelligence, because they know what constitutes intelligence has like 100 different angles. Its easy to be “smart” on dozns of areas and completely dumbshit on dozens of others.
ya youre right I should probably remove that.
I only used negative IQ because I remember seeing it from a meme and it stuck with me cause it was kind of funny lol
I do think the number is almost meaningless cause it only measures your comprehension of what the IQ test asks of you and not your comprehension of more complex things like different human connections and different things the human body can do when it comes to things like dancing , or reaction time or calisthenics for examples.
This is a well-thought out, balanced, and nuanced take that I completely agree with. Although I admit, I do sometimes fall short of the ideal when faced with bigotry. It can be hard not to dehumanize those who would dehumanize you - but that creates an inescapable cycle.
Unless it was edited though, OP didn’t call people “negative IQ narcissistic garbage” but was referring to their words. I think it’s an important distinction - the words we choose to speak can be harmful, and it’s something we inflict on the world. Even if the way a person arrives at a hateful conclusion is defensible, it doesn’t make their views any less contemptible.
We’d probably both agree that “negative IQ” is ableist language, and using that kind of language as a pejorative is wrong. OP could do better next time, and after reading your exchange I think they probably will
I guess I can agree with you. My view from all the pain and Ive experienced from others’ mean acrions or words or their unusual ostracization of me was “They can be mean to me all they want. The world sucks enough already. Why would I want to make it suck even more?”. But maybe Im just speaking from my narrow perspective . All because I was able to turn around the hate I received around into a little bit of love and self-love maybe I was more priveleged than others to a point where I had the capability to turn my hate around because I receivced more guidance on how to do that from my therapist and teachers than others did.
Though I still have a hard time accepting that most fully grown adults who choose to do or spew hurtful things have NO agency in what they choose to do. Certainly there has to come an age where you just ‘wake up’ and realize that ‘Hurt people may hurt people …Therefore why the hell would I deliberately hurt more people?’. Right?
Well, rather than wondering about how they have lived this long and still haven’t learned, that can be flipped the other way around too: they’ve acted this way for 60 years already. The patterns of that behaviour are quite deeply engraved at that point and even more difficult to get rid of. Older people are called stubborn for a reason and there are sayings about that too such as “an old dog doesn’t learn new tricks.”
However, as I said, it’s not to excuse that behaviour but rather just approach it from a different angle. When a person behaves that way asserting blame as if they could have acted otherwise is unproductive. The focus should in my opinion be in understanding that this behaviour is usually a symptom of some deeper issues. These people are in pain whether they know it or not.
Makes me think of a certain person at work who was always in a bad mood and lashing out. The one time he then took it too far so I asked him to step aside but rather than telling them off I asked whether I had unknowingly done something to them and told how disrespected I felt by the way they behaved. Well, turns out it had nothing to do with me. They were embarrassed and apologized and ever since that they have acted super nice towards me. I wish this reflected on how I always handle conflicts, it doesn’t, but this time the more gentle approach completely de-escalated the situation. I can well imagine how that could’ve gone completely differently had I taken a different approach.
But again: stressed out, underslept, overworked and then tipped over by a minor inconvenience. The reasons behind this kind of behaviour are usually rather mundane.
Well, rather than wondering about how they have lived this long and still haven’t learned, that can be flipped the other way around too: they’ve acted this way for 60 years already. The patterns of that behaviour are quite deeply engraved at that point and even more difficult to get rid of. Older people are called stubborn for a reason and there are sayings about that too such as “an old dog doesn’t learn new tricks.” However, as I said, it’s not to excuse that behaviour but rather just approach it from a different angle. When a person behaves that way asserting blame as if they could have acted otherwise is unproductive. The focus should in my opinion be in understanding that this behaviour is usually a symptom of some deeper issues. These people are in pain whether they know it or not.
Ah yes! Good ooint. It could just be that theyre conditioned to act or react in those ways to certain , or sometimes even all, stressors in their life . Like their oast trauma has been so thorough and long that theyve become conditioned in this way usually through no fault of their own. I dont think we should excuse toxic behaviours though I was watching this one Dave’s Lemonade episode about a man who did something absoutely heinous but after hewas caught and convicted there was a ‘secondary trial’ for him that assessed whst in his life led to him becoming the type of man that he was…and…yup! His childhood and even his adulthood too surprisingly clearly explained how he became the way he became. Ill try to find thr video… Edit : Here it is: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Otz6Ydf9Avk
But again: stressed out, underslept, overworked and then tipped over by a minor inconvenience. The reasons behind this kind of behaviour are usually rather mundane
Good point. Well I guess I am speaking from a point of privelege here again cause usually when I feel this way I can take a moment , or even many moments, to just cool off , understand what is making me mad, understand ehat happened to me, and try to find ways to overcome it. Others may not have this luxury…
Religions tend to reinforce being a child, Christianity at least. It makes people more malleable to the social engineering.
Ow the edge
Religious people act like they do because they believe an invisible sky person has some big cosmic plan, and they are helping to fulfill that plan by being the generally shitty way they do.
Calling that out for what it is is hardly being edgy.
Religious people act like they do because they believe an invisible sky person has some big cosmic plan, and they are helping to fulfill that plan by being the generally shitty way they do.
No biases , overgeneralistions or anything similar to that here. Nope, just straight “Facts don’t care about your feelingsTM”
People are social creatures. They follow peer pressure. If you want to make the world better, one of the ways is to spend the effort to be better, to work on being kind with other people.
I had two different work friends, years ago. Both of them had low to mid grade homophobia. They’d say things. But after a couple years of me working on them, they stopped.
Was it worth it? Maybe. It was harder than just writing them off, but I like to think as a result of my spending the time with them, they hurt people less.
I remmember I used to have a racist coworker and I tried to be kind to him and help him understand that he cant keep saying and doing such things to his fellow coworkers cause they werent ‘White Enough©®™’ for his liking. …Was it worth it?..No…Cause he got worse… Somehow
I got fired anyways so I have no idea how he is nowadays. Maybe he’s turned around…hopefully…
Your view of what adulthood should be is ironically child-like itself. There is no standard. You will lose a lot of energy focusing on how your way is obviously the right way and everyone else is wrong.
well you could be right but I feel like my outlook on adulthood cant really be compared to any others right now since I dont have a ton of experience on what a healthy adulthood oughta look like. Im only 30. When Im 55 or 75 I think Il bee far more qualified to speak on what a healthy adulthood looks like.
Im not putting you on the spot of anything but do you have anythings to recommend that I can compare my outlook on adulthood to to others’ to demonstrate the flaws I have on my outlook please? Its ok of you cant recommend anything other than me just talking to more adults. I know that I am heavily inexperienced because ya Im only 30 year olds and 30 year olds tend to not be the most experienced or have very good complex analysis of how a healthhy adulthood oughta look like.
Also yoyusaid that there is no standard. And yes I agree, I dont think there is a formal standard. BUT Personally I feel that there should be some sort of ‘social-contract-based’ or ‘informal’ standard as to whst a healthy adulthood oughta look like or look similar to. Like being a diehard nazi in your 60s or even your 40s or 20s is supposedly a good standard for adulthood for some…why? 🤨 I think most would disagree with that. The way I see it is that there are many things that the law allows an adult to do and get away with HOWEVER I do think that there should be certain things that are ‘informally-enforced’ by the social contract mosts adults have agreed on. Like being a fully grown adult who was caught in the Epstein Files or being an unafraid die hard nazi who has committed many hatr crimes should, in my opinion , cause an adult to be treated in 'certain ways ’ by the followers of the social contract , until they begin the process to pay reparations to affected groups of their barbarism. Am I wrong?
I read that casey anthony gets bullied occasionally because of her crimes that we ALL know she actually committed(pfft girl stop lying . We have you !) and…I have no problem with I read about there and I dont see it as a problem until she confesses completely and takes full accountability for all she has done. Am I wrong about this? I would highly doubt that Im wrong about this.
How are you any different from Christians trying to impose their god’s morality and rules on everyone else? You want people to be punished for things you personally consider to be immoral. This isn’t about adults acting like adults. You’re conflating maturity with morality, and you want to be the judge. I do believe you’re wrong about this. It may feel logical to you, but bullying someone until they confess to some moral failing is not logical to me, because morality is subjective. I understand if you feel like our current justice system isn’t enough, but that’s a separate issue. From your comments, it seems you want to go much farther than that and actually police the way people think.
Good point.
I should clarify cause Im kind of an idiot and what I wrote is wrong.
What I meant to say is that I feel that a person should be informally punished by for what WE KNOW THEY DID and IF IT WAS HEINOUS and IF THE FORMAL ‘JUSTICE SYSTEM’ (if you can even call it that nowadays) DOESNT PUNISH THEM.
Like we all know that casey anthony did it but she never confesse and made an attemot t make reparations for what she did . So do I see a problem with her being currently informallypunisished ? No.
Same can be said about trump or Anyone else in the Epstein Files. We know most of them are guilty as sin but will the formal ‘justice system’ punish Any of them?.. HA! only the ones who are too poor to bribe their way out of it. So these who will escape formal punishment have the thumbs up to receive any informal punishment that We The Workers see fit
I strongly believe age doesn’t equate to more qualification to speak on the subject or have an opinion. It’s subjective, there simply is no correct take (including mine, it’s just opinion). I’m not saying you’re flawed, though I am suggesting that perhaps you relax the need to arrive at a definitive definition, if only for your own well being.
Social contracts exist, but they’re rather amorphous and sometimes ephemeral. My main point is simply not to place too much weight on the subject.
Your epstein example is one where I actually disagree that a social contract needs any enforcement; it requires actual judicial enforcement. That these individuals have not been pursued legally is a massive judicial failing and exemplifies the total corruption of (american) institutions.
Your epstein example is one where I actually disagree that a social contract needs any enforcement; it requires actual judicial enforcement. That these individuals have not been pursued legally is a massive judicial failing and exemplifies the total corruption of (american) institutions
… wot? Im not talking about only americans because there were people from all over the planet in the epstein files… . wot?
also , ‘Oh yes! Let us rely on the very judicial and executive government systems that have failed us a trillion times and will fail us again. Itll be different THIS time around.’ 😂🤣🤭
I’ve noticed that there are two distinct mindsets in people who have been hurt in one way or another.
The first is “I had it bad, so I don’t want others to experience the same.”
The second is “I had it bad, so why would anyone else have it better?”
I think they genuinely feel cheated when someone else gets something they never got. And they take it out on the people who did get that thing instead of holding the people accountable who denied them that thing. Even if they didn’t deserve to get hurt, that is a shitty outlook to have on life and it’s not going to do anyone any good.
Thank you for saying this.
I think that theres another aspect to this flawed outlook on life that I want to point out . Like if someone feels cheated by others who got something they didnt get and they feel bitter about this and then they make efforts to harm and exclude those who got that thing, doesnt that make them get trapped in sort of a cycle where they continually isolate others who got that thing , even the people of that group who could genuinely help them?
Like if you get bullied by a bunch of White people simply cause youre not White and you decide to just completely ostracise all White people? THAT is a bad plan. Youre ostracizing an entire group of people , there are many different types of people in each groups of peoples. There are clearly many White people who knows that all non-White people are their equals and treat them as such. If you feel bitter towards all White people you will miss out on important life lessoms that some of them can teach you and even some important life lessons you can teach them. If you feel saddened cause your mom or dad or both said that they will never raise you or see you again when you were younger , being bitter towards people who had been raised by both parents is bad cause some of them have important life lessons about being raised by both parents that you may never have had heard otherwise.
You can even apply this lesson in other ways. Like all because some Muslims are hardcore Saudi-prince-loving wahhabists that doesnt mean you should ostracize them all. All because some French people support the current colonization of Kanaky that doesnt mean all French people do so ostracizjng all french people is nonsensical. You could apply this to any group. A few bad apples doesnt ruin the fresh bunch.
I used to have A LOOOT of internalized racism. I saw Black people as not worthy of listening to even though I myself am Black. I basically saw only White people as worthy of listening to about ANY topic. You should have seen my jaw hit the floor when I realized that there were Black people out there with doctorates who were equally as qualified and knowledgable of certain subjects as any equally qualified White person. I was even more shocked when I started watching videos of Nlack people who went through similar experiences as me and were talking in depth about it!
Is it really THAT hard to break free of the chains of your terrible childhood
Yes, it’s hard and you should do some therapy about it, but we don’t live in a society that encourages this. I know how you feel but most people are not capable of doing that on their own.
Curious why you expect it to have gotten better by the “year of 2026” when our genetics hasn’t meaningfully changed for a million years. Our bodies are predisposed to form tribes, hoard resources, and perpetrate atrocities that only exist at a scale enabled by civilization.
It won’t be solved until we wait a million years or use a CRISPR-like technology to fix our flaws.
I’ve read your post and some of your comments below the post.
I love you, bro. (No gender assumption.)
You are a good person. Be proud of yourself. ❤️
Thank you for your kind words ❤️🩹🫂
and yes I am a bro lol
My bro 🤜🤛
🫱🏼🫲🏿🫂💖
As a species, we are not prepared for wide empathy. The farther some event is from us, the easier it becomes to dissociate from. What can compensate for this is nurture and culture but self reflection is a very dificult, even painful, exercise.
And to use your words against yourself, logic takes no part in this. Logic just denotes a sequence of events or concepts that, for the person experiencing or describing, hold value. Sometimes, we are able to correctly convey our logic to others and they gather a semblance of understanding on our thought process but that is all. Logic is not a sacred cow.
I personally find amusing hearing someone stating they act solely based on reasoning, as if that exempts them from their basal and underlying emotions.
We are not rational nor logic. We spend a lifetime mostly reacting to what surrounds us, droning through life. Existing, taking hold of your own conscience is a difficult task. Teaching others to do it, even more.
And you wonder why all you describe happens?
One of the great struggles of humanity is ‘cognitive load.’ Thinking, even if you have a very efficient brain, takes effort, and more advanced thought requires more effort. In hierarchies, part of the power dynamic consists of the displacement of cognitive load. The higher powered individuals don’t think about what the lower powered individuals think, and, with enough power, not even the collective. The lower powered individuals, though, must consider the desires of those with higher power in order to make their way through the world. They have to expend effort, to carry the cognitive load.
Those adult children you are talking about are those who have not had to carry the load. People generally don’t expend effort they are not forced to, so why would they go to the effort of considering the effects of their actions on others when their life has taught them that’s the job of those lower than them? Or that they can do what they want without expending the effort and not only not be punished, but get ahead in life because their society runs on psychopathy?
Wow this is an interesting take and I have to say I agree.
what do you get when you spend decades eroding a social system that prunes itself and replace it with a social structure that allows inclusive shameless adults that receive little to no punishment?

EXACTLY!
Fuck capitalism and crapitalists!
The short version is that life is too easy.
Long version is that humans evolved in an environment where death could come from every corner you walked around. The people who made the world something that should revolve around their ideas of threats and fear were the ones that survived. Since the invention of civilization, those threats have become much more abstract but the human brain hasn’t changed that much. We keep looking for threats, but they aren’t there. Instead of accepting that they don’t exist, people decided that they must be hidden around every corner they can’t see around.
OP a lot of these responses are shitting on you, but I have asked myself that same question so many times.
It blows my mind how many cluelessly lost people I have met. People who have their shit together really are the exception.
Something that sticks with me are those people who reach middle age, like deep into their 40s or or even into their senior years, and theyre still cluelessly lost as to how to just be empathetic or to not call me or others racial or derogatory slurs. Ive been called slurs by far more people who Ive observed were probably older than 40 than I have been by people who were in their 20s or even their teens.
I can excuse a youngin who behaves in almost any way because we were all young and easily impressionable, right? Even I was once a young knucklehead .
But I feel that there is a certain age where your own tenacity should take over and you should be the one who makes the call on how you will behave and will react to different situatiins - and it should always be the more empathetic call . If youre past like 40 amd youre still out here calling people slurs or ghosting people when you have accepted to be their friend or ghosting people who you have agreed to date? then I dont know what to say to ’ you other than I think you need a psychologist. Not nly for your safety but for also the rest of mankind’s safety’ . I feel there’s a lot of people who need mental health assistance so they can break that cycle of conditioning themselves to be so cold and to break the cycle of trauma theyve experienced and not dole out their pain to others is all Im saying.
It is incredible! I can name five people whose set up 10s of thousand can only dream about, yet they are miserable and fuck it up.
One them, all they had to do was work out and they still train wrecked their life.
You would think they would figure it out.
Very old…
In their 60s
lol
isnt that when a person becomes a senior citizen?
To me 40 is old cause thats when your athleticism and your recovery time start to slow down.
To me 40 is old cause thats when your athleticism …
No
Ha! How long are you planning to be old? That is insane. If you are old at 40 you could be old for over half your life!
I am near 60. I bike to work, work over 40 hours a week, do yoga 4 days a week, lift twice a week. Definitely slower, can’t run but not really old yet, as far as I can tell. I think very old is over 75 usually - that’s when people start to feel like they have lived long, and start really seeing people they know die of old age.
And if I am going to live to 90, as the statistics seem to think, I can’t really be OLD until I am like 80.
Please let me be there when you tell your mom and dad that very old is 60 years old, and that senior citizen is when you are 40






